Samlex America Samlex Solar SSW-350-12A SSW Series Pure Sine Wave Inverter, Gray

I installed this at a remote cabin but have not had a chance to check it out much.

Permanently wired this to power a Tiny PC on my boat. Installed it where water won't get to it. Fan is variable so low power usage is very quiet. Repackaged warehouse deals was a steal for me!

Great unit. Takes the smaller jobs away from the Pro Watt 3000

(Apologies for the long-winded review, but I needed to be thorough on this.) Pros: * Lightweight * Mounting brackets * USB port that charges smartphones and has proper AC adapter signaling (phone recognizes the power source to be a charger) * USB charging feature works even when inverter is off * Doesn't put out a ton of RF noise like a lot of other cheap sine wave units * Good bang for the buck, especially when considering this inverter is a sine wave unit that's UL certified. Cons: * It's too lightweight - feels very cheap for a $100+ unit * Unlike the PST series and other ones from Samlex, this fan is not temperature controlled, it is load controlled and the fan comes on regardless of what temperature it's actually running at * Fan is quite noisy even at no load * Because of the always-on USB, it can end up draining your car battery * Waveform is quite distorted (13-15% total harmonic distortion when unloaded!) that gets worse as you put more loads on it * Pretty poor voltage regulation especially under fast-changing loads like stereo amplifiers/receivers, etc. and sags much more than the ~5 volts in the datasheet * Frequency tends to drift +/- 1 Hz * Power terminals screw into the unit; other units are a "nut" where the bolt part of the terminal is on the unit itself - this makes attaching leads a bit of a pain * Fuse is not external - if something goes wrong that it blows the fuse (reverse polarity or overload perhaps?) then the whole unit is toast * ONLY comes with battery clips, no cigarette lighter plug * Battery clips are low-quality - the insulating sleeves fell off my unit during transit, and the cords are flimsy * Narrow input voltage range - the unit starts beeping well before my other inverters signal a low battery; unit only works from 10.5-15.3 volts DC * LED indicators are quite dim even when viewed indoors This inverter is an good model when considering the price of this unit ($100 or so for a fairly decent pure sine wave inverter). However, I found its output voltage performance to be quite disappointing as it put out a waveform that was substantially distorted (and caused a few of my electronics to buzz as if it were hooked up to a modified-sine wave inverter), and when put under load was even worse. The load-controlled fan is an annoyance since it not only wastes battery power, but also runs when there is no load connected to the inverter. The quality of a unit was disappointingly low for a Samlex brand inverter, but it still beats the pants out of a generic sine wave inverter and is so much better than a modfied-sine inverter. Bottom line: It's a nice inexpensive pure sine wave inverter, but you get what you paid for. Also, I have taken oscilloscope images of the inverter's waveform when unloaded, when put at 50% load, and when delivering surge power. The images are located in the image gallery for this item.

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